Daniel Abbey

Note: this post uses portions of an old article you may have read but can now no longer find on my site. Forgive me. I’ve always wanted to reword that article. This is the (better) update.

I miss drinking tea.

“Well get up and make some you dopey fool!”

Yeah but I don’t feel like it. I haven’t felt like drinking tea for a few weeks now.

Something must be wrong.

I’m English. And like every other scraggly-toothed, stiff-upper-lipped yeoman I like my tea – nay, NEED my tea on a regular basis.

Tea is how we start/get through/end the day as well as react to football matches/deal with strange election results/conclude funerals.

In Britain, people drink an average of 1,550,600 cups a day – just over 7 Olympic-size swimming pools – a stupendous amount of tea. Hooray for India.

English tea consumption, like the mathematical equation Pi, is constant, bankable, and woven into the very fabric of the universe.

So why am I not drinking?

It’s not like I don’t have the right brand. Some people won’t drink tea unless it’s of a very special quality, grown in the magical hills of some faraway third-world country, protected by rebel insurgents and tree fairies, touched only by virgins, transported down to civilization one sack every six months and doled out to the rest of the world on a gold barter arrangement. This tea is usually sipped out of a small porcelain thimble held between the thumb and index finger with the pinky extended as far away in the other direction as humanly possible.

That ain’t me. I also dislike anything that pretends to be avant garde but is actually the product of some unholy union between Earl Grey and a dubious sounding fruit. Bergamot Orange is one such example. It’s as clear as ant’s blood and tastes like mouthwash. I’d sooner use it to scrub my car than let it slip down my throat.

I enjoy the traditional English cuppa, also known as Builder’s Tea, which is strongly brewed Ceylon with milk and sugar mixed in. Forget green tea, herbal tea, or whatever medicinal tea your local shaman alternative doctor is hawking you. They may be able to cure cancer, promote brain activity, and enhance sexual performance but do you really wanna chastise your taste buds to be a virile, intelligent lothario?

Wait, don’t answer that question.

Back to my current tea-totalling (pun intended). Maybe it’s the unbearable Philippine heat? It’s hard to drink tea when it feels like the earth’s been stuffed inside a giant leather jacket.

Or maybe it’s because I tend to drink coffee most of the time at work. Now that I have a real job with real deadlines and a real coffee machine in the pantry with tons of gourmet grains in stock, coffee has become, well, a lot easier to prep and drink, that’s for sure.

I know there’s a theological lesson buried in here somewhere. Maybe if I flip the kettle on and drop a teabag into a mug, it’ll all become clear.

Like Bergamot Orange, only better.

I seriously love our new coffee machine.

My wife and I recently bought a Braun Coffee Maker so we could start consuming a huge cask of ground coffee sent by my mother-in-law from the US. We didn’t want to let the coffee go to waste and had always wanted to ditch instant coffee anyway. So we invested in a simple unit and began brewing.

So far, so addicted. I’ve always enjoyed coffee but to now wake up to the pleasant aroma of freshly brewed coffee hanging in the clear morning air, well it’s pure joy.

To be able to warm the house with a pot of coffee in the afternoon while the world outside endures a cold and relentless downpour is also a real treat.

Reading a good book over a swirling mug of steaming coffee is further proof we made a decent and crucial investment.

I’m loving every minute.

I’m also wary of the shakes.

Not that my increased coffee intake has suddenly turned me into a sunken-eyed, trembling madman (homeschooling my son takes care of that). It’s just that whenever I amplify my flirtations with coffee I always undergo a heightened sense of awareness that seriously impedes my ability to function like a normal human being.

In other words, coffee plays on my nerves.

I can remember several occasions when this hasn’t been a good thing.

One was when I was shaving.

I was at the kitchen sink and had laid aside a small stand mirror to rinse my razor. Now anyone who knows me is aware that I abhor rats and anything else that crawls rapidly and without remorse. You’ll also know that I once lived in a house that had a serious rat and cockroach problem.

I was at the sink when I saw some quick movement in the mirror, something that resembled a lumbering rodent headed in my direction.

Naturally, I freaked. After a few seconds flailing about the kitchen like a donkey having a spasm, I realized that the “rodent” in the mirror was merely a quick reflection of my arm.

How sad.

My current caffeine intake, although elevated, has so far produced little in the way of similarly erratic behavior. But I do feel it’s fast approaching a level where paranoia is a virtue and regular gesticulation is the mark of a true coffee hero.

I’m sort of code yellow at the moment, approaching code red, if you know what I mean. I’m more prone to fiendish outbursts whenever my son jumps out from behind me, more liable to type a hundred mistakes a minute when speed typing (or whatever you call rapid typing with four fingers while salivating over the keyboard).

I don’t want to regulate my coffee, although that’s probably the best thing to do at this point.

It’s a good thing there are no rodents where I now live.